They say that supposedly “idle” time is vital to creative people. Although it might appear that the “artist” is slumped on the couch, the remote control in one paw and a mug of cooling tea in the other, this apparent inactivity is actually masking the delicate gestation of an aesthetic concept.This rather self-serving concept (you […]
I thought the story that appeared in the San Francisco Chronicle about “the Compact”–“About 50 teachers, engineers, executives and other professionals in the Bay Area have made a vow to not buy anything new in 2006 — except food, health and safety items and underwear.”–introduced a commendable idea. Until I reached the following paragraphs: “The […]
“Of course, before Eastern Europe can really take off a generation of workers with the communist mentality will have to die off.” This is a cliche that has been kicking around these parts for at least the last fifteen years. In general, I’ve always been suspicious of it. It sounds a bit too much like […]
I may return to my increasing involuted reflections on the writings on David Foster Wallace at a later stage, but events, as they say, have intervened. The increasingly bizarre and sinister protests over the putatively anti-Islamic cartoons that appeared in the Danish paper Jyllands-Posten have already generated a few clich�s, which are being readily embraced […]
Those of us misfortunate or misguided enough to have dealings with Microsoft’s word processing programme will be aware of Bill Gates�s campaign against the passive voice. (I’ll leave aside Microsoft�s cretinous insistence on commas before all relative pronouns.) But the passive voice is coming under attack from other quarters too. Into my hands has fallen […]
Two stories from Oblivion reveal David Foster Wallace�s debt to Jorge Luis Borges* most clearly. The first, �Another Pioneer,� which indirectly recounts the story of the influence of a child prodigy/deity on the mindset of a nameless Palaeolithic tribe living in an Amazonian rainforest, borrows the quintessential Borgesian technique of using a framing or distancing […]
Just as the hysterical claims that the Sheffield outfit has already surpassed The Beatles in musical achievement have the paradoxical effect of making me never want to hear another track from the ‘world-beating album‘ by the Arctic Monkeys, so the assertions that David Foster Wallace is the best writer of his (our?) generation have ensured […]
“Give Hamas a Chance” Gazeta wyborcza (28-29th Jan) magnanimously states on page six in the headline of a piece by Mariusz Zawadzki, datelined Gaza and marked “analysis”. The subhead (actually it appears above the grand headline) reads: Democracy in the Middle East is bearing unexpected fruit. Elections are being won by the ultra radical Mahmud […]
The Poles seemed to lose interest in novels very quickly. Hardly had they managed to produce a handful of decent ones than Witold Gombrowicz set to work writing “anti-novels.” His contemporary, Witkacy, refused even to accord novels the status of “art.” Polish writers are still experimenting with a form barely mastered. Take Sławomir Shuty’s Zwał: […]
From Friday’s Rzeczpospolita, a national daily paper in Poland: A front page article by Marcin Czeka?ski about the detrimental effects of the government’s disarray. It seems that many key posts have not been filled yet. There is no treasury minister, for example. And then this gem: “Privatisation is limping. PiS [the near-winners of the elections] […]
